The Commonwealth Foundation announced that Canadian Vincentian writer Chanel Sutherland was selected as the overall winner of the 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Sutherland, who was born in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and lives in Montreal, Canada, “saw off 7,920 entrants worldwide to take the £5,000 prize.”
The foundation said that her win was publicized at an online ceremony, presented by Rwandan performing artist and storyteller, Malaika Uwamahoro, in which Sutherland and the other four regional winners spoke about their writing and read short extracts from their stories.
In ‘Descend’, as a slave ship sinks, one of the enslaved Africans starts telling a story of the wife he has left behind. In the darkness, others join in. Springing vividly to life, the men and women tell their own stories—of love, family and the worlds from which they had been brutally removed.
The chair of the judges, Dr Vilsoni Hereniko, said, “Told in the quiet voice of a seer, ‘Descend’ is deep and profound. It tells the story of slaves packed like sardines in the hull of a sinking ship, an allegory that affirms the unrivalled power of storytelling to set our spirits free and find hope where none exists [. . .].”
Dr Anne T. Gallagher AO, Director-General of the Commonwealth Foundation, the intergovernmental organisation that administers the prize, said ‘“Descend” is a superb piece of storytelling—bold in form, precise in detail, and unforgettable in its impact. Chanel Sutherland has taken a moment of extreme peril and fashioned a narrative that holds the reader from first line to last. She handles the weight of history with precision and imagination. This is exactly the level of craft and originality the Commonwealth Short Story Prize exists to celebrate. My congratulations to Chanel, to our outstanding regional winners, and to every writer who entered this year’s record-breaking competition.’
Chanel Sutherland said, “I took a risk with ‘Descend’—its shape, its voices—because I believed every enslaved person deserves to have their story told with dignity. I can’t tell all the stories, or restore the lives that were stolen, but I’m humbled that this one resonates.” [. . .]
Chanel Sutherland is a Canadian Vincentian writer of fiction and creative nonfiction. Her debut short story collection, Layaway Child, will be published by House of Anansi in 2026. Chanel won the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize and the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize and received the 2022 Mairuth Sarsfield Mentorship. CBC Books named her one of 30 Writers to Watch in 2022.
As part of the Commonwealth Foundation’s partnership with The London Library, the overall winner receives a two years’ Full Membership to the Library and the regional winners receive a year’s Full Membership.
The literary magazine Granta has published all the regional winning stories of the 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, including ‘Descend’.
The five stories will also be available in a special print collection from Paper + Ink (www.paperand.ink).
The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is free to enter and is awarded annually for the best piece of unpublished short fiction from the Commonwealth. It is the only prize in the world where entries can be submitted in Bengali, Chinese, Creole, French, Greek, Malay, Maltese, Portuguese, Samoan, Swahili, Tamil, and Turkish as well as English.
Submissions for the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize will open on 1 September 2025. Those interested in entering the prize can follow @cwfcreatives on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and keep up to date with the prize via commonwealthfoundation.com/short-story-prize.
Download Chanel’s photograph and biography here.
For more information, see https://commonwealthfoundation.com/short-story-prize/